Hello thanks for visiting my profile.

For any picture posts I make with the [OC] tag, I provide a license for you to use my photo under the terms of CC-BY-SA-4.0. You may DM me for questions.

  • 2 Posts
  • 148 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: March 14th, 2023

help-circle




  • Canadians still didn’t want to trust them with a majority.

    I don’t have the same read as you on this point specifically. 43% and 42% (for Cons) are both majority earning popular vote numbers in Canada, but it did mean that there was more support for the Liberals instead of the NDP overall (up from 33% in 2021). You can talk about held noses but Carney was viewed as a legitimately competent leader for our time of crisis and people voted accordingly. There were a lot of instances of Conservatives winning due to split votes in Southwest Ontario that was the main thing keeping them from a majority government.

    I do think with the NDP wielding the balance of power, it is indeed a good idea to push for abolishing FPTP among many progressive reforms, but we don’t have to commit to PR or bust from the start.

    My point is: The shitty electoral system that keeps the Liberals in, is also the one that kept them out of majority territory this time.





  • On the other hand maybe his character and judgement will be strong enough to do better.

    Canadians including myself are all too familiar of politicians losing their convictions to appease established political interests. The fact that Carney has been an outsider to our politics until this year, has me optimistic that he would more likely than most to hold onto them to do what is right (in the utilitarian sense), not just for the connected elite. But it can happen to anyone so I’m not holding my breath for it either.


  • If Mark Carney wins, he will govern in Poilievre’s shadow

    Only if we Canadians let him. If Carney, who professed environmentally conscious thinking in his book Values, is willing to borrow Poilievre’s ideas for a campaign, I imagine he is also willing to listen to ideas from the people just the same in government.-

    Now’s (or Monday if we hear the result is a Liberal majority) is not the time to despair. It’s the time to put our own progressive slate of ideas together and tell our MPs what we want and how we as Canadians can accomplish it. Rhetoric is rhetoric, I think it’s high time for action, no matter what the ultimate make up of the House is next week.






  • That’s a sound plan IMO and I’m in support of doing all of that. We can act in this way, but during the campaign the parties have been pressed to make a unilateral declaration on how the state will be organized, which is not within their capability.

    Also note that Canada has already paid a toll with our aid workers being killed by Israeli forces, so we still have to keep that in mind as we proceed.

    Party leaders can indicate their ideal goals, but there’s nothing any of the leaders can promise about the fate of Palestine itself, or whether it is free and democratic, or if a despot gets installed, since it relies on so many factors outside our control.


  • Many saw the move as a revival of the party’s identity, and some even speculated that the Liberal government might fall and the NDP could mount a breakthrough campaign.

    Even as I saw the government forcibly end the workers’ strike and the NDP break the confidence agreement over it, I saw it at the time more as political maneuvering, than an actual revival of the party. I wanted Singh and MPs to stand with striking workers literally rather than just figuratively. They say a lot of nice words like “we will fight for you”, but are always light on details about what they would do if they were in power, and we have not seen concrete action taken yet either (I get that legislature wise that’s not entirely their fault).

    The Gaza/Free Palestine problem is also an Achilles’ heel wedge issue destroying the party as well. Canada and by extension the NDP can do little about that besides posturing, while it is both in International courts and being massively funded by the US. Most of our energy should be on problems we can solve rather than those we can’t, and we shouldn’t shun people completely because they don’t come with picture-perfect views on one issue or another, since that is what gets exploited by bad-faith actors and trolls.

    I have real hope in the BCNDP, ABNDP, SKNDP and MBNDP for having actual ideas to solve actual issues of inequality, homeless and the housing crisis, healthcare. The ONDP is on the right track but still quite irrelevant…, and Singh seems to be following in their path rather than Western NDP style which I think we need some aspects of again. Tommy Douglas, a prominent Saskatchewan CCF leader and Premier after all.